


Cut From the Journal of Therem Harth rem ir Estraven

by bratrights



Category: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: 5+1 Things, Denial, Diary/Journal, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Multi, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratrights/pseuds/bratrights
Summary: Five Times Estraven Struggled With Their Feelings And the One Time They Didn’tWritten for TLHOD Secret Santa 2018





	Cut From the Journal of Therem Harth rem ir Estraven

1\. Streth Thern  
Having been the prime minister of Karhide, I was well acquainted with both unease and waiting through it. Nothing, however, had quite prepared me for this, prepared me for tending to an alien, and yet here we were. Ai had fainted after the last time he had awoken, and now rested fitfully, feverish. I was grateful he was resting, and that he was here rather than the farm, but there was little else to be grateful for. I had little, and still in thangen I could do less for him than he deserved. 

It was endlessly frustrating. Ai mumbled and whimpered to himself in a language I did not know. I wondered if it was his native tongue. I wondered if I would get the chance to ask him. 

I watched him. There was little else to do. And when watching grew too melancholic to bear, I spoke to him. 

“Ai, we have misunderstood each other, and for this I apologize. It has been too easy to forget we are equally alien to each other. This is, in part, through blunder of my own. When you awaken, I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.” The alien slept. It was too easy to speak to him like this, asleep, asking nothing. He had asked so much, and nothing at all, and I had misunderstood him the whole time. 

And somehow, despite that, I had come to care for him. Care about him. 

He had no shifgrethor, and silent as he was I could waive mine. How strange it was that an alien could come her and upturn everything I knew. It was my own cowardice that spoke these thoughts into the cold air of the tent, to let it hang between us, unanswered. 

“I have come to care for you, Ai. You have changed me. I want to see your mission done, not just for the good of Gethen, but for you as well.”

I woke up after the following day’s sleep to find Ai watching me with wonder in his eyes and voice. The relief I felt was far closer to the words I’d whispered to him in the tent than anything that he would ever know.

 

2\. Odguyrny Thern  
“I'm glad I have lived to see this,” I said.

The Gobrin Ice was a magnificent, awesome sight to behold. We could see the fire hills from where Ai and I stood. We took in the view. I meant what I said, to have lived to see this, the ice, and the change of my world, brought at the hand of an alien, to travel with him in this beautiful desolation. 

We skied downhill, laughing like children. Our sled was loaded for our survival and down to the ice we went laughing. 

We set up the tent that night in the shadow of the Ice. With luck, we would survive crossing some 600 miles of that ice. With luck. I had told Ai that much. He seemed content with that.   
I watched him as we ate. The tent was intimate, close quarters, and he was so like me, and so unlike me. Human, and alien. Fascinating, compelling, intriguing. I thought about the sight of the Ice, our shared wonder, laughing as we skied. I wondered if he looked at me and thought the same thing. I wondered if he knew what this all meant to me. 

“I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.” I said over gichy-michy. He looked at me with kind, alien eyes.

“The position of prime minister doesn’t allow much chance for laughter?”

“Neither does exile.” He laughed, a soft chuckle,but understood. At times like this, his understanding of me reminded me of Arek. It was a realization that hit harder than I expected. 

“You’ve never struck me as one for jokes, Harth.” He said and meant nothing by it, but I knew. It was our growing closeness, maybe our situation or maybe us as people. I didn’t know how to say to him that I hadn’t truly laughed since my sibling’s death. 

“It had been a hard thing to do, away from home.” I wondered if he understood that. He did not understand shifgrethor, not even after being here for all this time. I wished he did, I wished he knew that it was him, his influence. 

“I understand,” he said, in sympathy. We were similar, he and I. Exiles in our own right, for each others’ sakes. But it wasn’t the understanding I wanted. I didn’t think that would ever come. 

 

3\. Guyrny Thanern  
I was in kemmer. To deal with kemmer alone was not peasant, but it was doable. The problem that arose was that I was not alone. Ai was in a permanent state of kemmer, and I was never more aware of it now. 

He worried he had offended me. I had long since gotten used to his way of speaking, his misunderstanding of shifgrethor and how he transgressed it without realizing. And this time he’d made no mistake, it was I who was causing the problem. 

“I am in kemmer. I must not touch you.” I said. Kemmer made me fast to talk, faster to think. I wondered what touching him would have been like. Was the Envoy allowed to touch while visiting? 

“I understand.” He said. He agreed with me, a relief and a disappointment, and I wondered which of those it was to him. 

He spoke to me of isolation. He spoke to me of his home. To hear his voice in the dimness, it was enough to satisfy the ache for company, perplexing as his talk was. Conversation could not, however, satisfy all aches, and latent desire stirred in me unwanted. Ai was always in kemmer, did he always feel this? Or did those in permanent kemmer tame desire? 

So many questions I could not ask. Ai told me he had no shifgrethor, but that was not the only reason. 

He could not describe women to me. The concept, I think, baffled us both. I did not understand staying that way forever, and he had never been. We shared that, he remarked. My feelings were complex. I wanted to share more. 

Ai did not seem uncomfortable by my present state, though maybe unsure of how to act. I wished that there was less between us. I wished that there was more between us. I went to sleep aching for a presence that slept three feet from me. Too close and much too far away. 

 

4\. Odgetheny Thanern  
It was discouraging, not being able to learn mindspeak. Ai was trying to teach me, but it was a hard concept to grasp, and it seemed I had not the knack for it. I was deaf and tired, longing for sleep.

And on the edge of unconsciousness, clear as day, Arek’s voice in my head. 

“Arek!” I called for him and ached. Fourteen years since I’d heard that voice and it tore me open like a wound. And then, again, Arek’s voice, but not. It was so much worse to hear Ai say he was bespeaking me, and somehow sounded like Arek. Ai had told me there would be no lies; I could never had prepared myself for this. 

“I see why there's no lying in this mindspeech,” I said before I could think better of it. I wonder if he knew what I meant. To hear him in my head with the voice of Arek, my sibling, my first kemmering, how could I deny that truth any longer. 

I loved him. I looked across the dark tent at the alien who had come to change my world and knew that my love for him was a terrible, undeniable truth, like the voice in my head. 

He asked, of course he asked about my sibling. A curious alien who never learned when not to ask questions, or perhaps was taught to ask them. And what could I tell him, not that I had loved my sibling and now loved an alien the same way. I left home for my sibling, and Ai left home for me. This was the truth his mindspeech brought to me. 

"Bespeak me, Therem. Call me by my name." He asked of me. I longed to, I loathed to. To tell him in a language without lies that I loved him, to swear kemmering to one who has traveled space and time. How could I?

“Genry,” I managed, proud and terrified. I think maybe he was disappointed at my unwillingness to hear him speak inside my head, though it was no fault of his own. It was just my cowardice that made me fear this unspoken language, and its candidness, and a confession wanted desperately, but unable to be made. 

 

5\. Odyrny Nimmer  
The ice. It was the ice, great towers of blue, cities frozen in the depths where no human should see. Awesome and overwhelming. My fall took a toll on us both, frightened Genry and shook me. The unshadow did not treat us kindly, and then face the crevasse, it was terrifying. Genry voiced the fear, but it was in both of us. Acute, chronic, as he said. 

We pitched the tent early. It was disheartening, and Genry was not happy about it, but it needed to be done. A fear had taken us. The ice was cut, ragged, rotten, and should one of us fall, the other would not survive. How odd dependency was. 

We talked on a form of dependency. To need both light and dark to see. Genry took my journal and drew a symbol I’d never seen before, an image from another world.

“It’s you, Therem,” he said. It’s us, I thought but didn’t say. 

“You told me once that my people are obsessed with wholeness, and yours with duality.” I said, instead, “Is this not a form of duality?”

“Dual and whole, as well I suppose.” He laughed, “a relationship of sorts.”

“Like kemmerings.” He hummed, nodding. “Genry may I ask you something?”

“Therem you needn’t ask. I have no shifgrethor, ask away.” He smiled kindly. It was against my nature to ask but curiosity drove me. I wondered if it drove him as well. 

“You said Gethen was alone in our ambisexuality. Are we alone in the idea of kemmerings as well?” I had thought on that for a long time. Do worlds of permanent kemmer not have permanent relationships? Was that the exchange? Not that I could say much on permanent relationships, but I had wondered much on it.

“No, you are not. You are like the rest of our worlds in that regard. There’s a world 70 light years away with a similar idea of spending their whole lives with one person. The closest translation of their word for it is soulmate. There are, of course, planets unlike yours, where pairs don’t bond for longer than child rearing, but there are more alike than unalike.” 

“What of your planet?” I asked. I was already asking when I shouldn’t be. The light of the Chabe stove was dim, but I could have sworn Genry blushed. 

“Ah, it varies I suppose. Terrans have the idea of partnering for life, we call it marriage, but have no qualms about realizing that the one they chose was incorrect, or remarrying if their first dies.” He looked away, down at the stove. “It’s primarily about finding happiness, for us.”

“I see.” Shifgrethor or no shifgrethor I could not ask him more. 

“It’s a wonder to see the similarities between worlds and people distances apart no man could fathom.” He sounded wistful.

“And their dissimilarities, it would seem.”

“Alike and dislike. Light and dark. You and I, Therem.” Our eyes met over the stove. He was smiling his kind smile, and I wondered if he thought of me as a friend, or a partner. I wondered if I would be able to ask him before we left the Ice, before he changed the world. 

 

+1 Guyrny Anner  
Elation was not familiar to me, but welcome. Genry and I had come down off the Ice, and were to set off towards civilization the following day. What comes after, comes after, but to have survived the trip was cause enough to be relieved. 

We feasted on the last of our rations, gazing out over the Karhidish coast. It was not much of a feast, less than one-third ration for each of us. But we feasted. 

It seemed as though the journey had taken its toll on Genry. It had taken its toll on both of us, but he was less adept at starvation then I, frostbitten and scarred, he had been changed, worn down. I thought no less of him all but collapsing onto his sleeping bag. I respected him highly, in fact, an alien ill-equipped for sub-zero temperatures who could make the journey. A miracle. 

“Therem,” He said, propped up on one elbow, looking at me. “What are your plans for when we get back down there?” 

“Go into hiding,” I said. What comes next, comes next. He frowned. 

“Karhide will owe you for getting me here. Argaven will have to revoke your exile.”

“They are a monarch, Genry. The process may take time. Until then, worry about your starship, your Ekumen.”

“But I will worry about you, as well.”

“There is no need to.”

“I will, regardless.” He was obstinate. 

“Call down your ship, it may speed up the process.” 

“I will. I would like to not have to sign Karhide into the Ekumen until your exile is revoked, but you will tell me not to wait on your behalf.”

“Your primary mission is more important.” He hummed thoughtfully. He was scarred and frostbitten, skin darker than normal in many places. His eyes gleamed in the dim light of the Chabe stove. 

“Therem, may I ask you a question?”

“I have long since waived shifgrethor for you.”

“What do you think of me?” He asked so openly, honestly, and caught me so completely off guard that I was struck silent. My silence seemed to make him nervous, and so he continued, “I told you the Envoy comes alone to make a personal connection, and no connection I’ve ever made has been as personal as yours, and so I wondered what your perception is.”

He was so alien, so familiar, and so important. It was almost too easy to admit that I loved him. Rather than answer with words, I moved towards him. Around the Chabe stove. He sat up, watching me curiously, nervously, interestedly. I knelt next to him. 

“Therem, what are you -” He began, and I kissed him. It was so utterly against shifgrethor, against my very nature, and it was a relief, a feeling of love that had been growing unnoticed and unacknowledged for too long. 

I pulled back. Genry made an inarticulate sound, cupped my cheek, and kissed me. He was tentative, questioning, unsure of what to do but sure that he wanted to be doing it. When we separated again he was smiling.

“Are you answered?” 

“Yes,” He reached up, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I do not know what you do in Karhide with a love out of Kemmer, but on Terra we sleep side by side, often touching. Will you lay with me?”

“Gladly,” I said, honestly. We lay next to each other, turned the stove light down, and slept, curled around each other, like lovers in kemmer.


End file.
